SYNOPSIS

A drama of Chaebols and secrets of birth. Park Ye Ryung (Lee Elliya) is the daughter of a poor and crass single mother. Meanwhile, Hwang Geum Bok (Shin Da Eun) is Ye Ryung’s friend. [...which in itself is already enough of a weakness, by all accounts][KoreanDrama]

FIRST LOOK

In a recent article for entertainment news portal eToday, somewhat (in)famous reporter Bae Guk-Nam argued that defining makjang dramas “low quality” – like the broadcasting commission did on its now famous May 19 meeting which indirectly led to Im Seong-Han's announced retirement – was a bit of an oxymoron: low quality implies that what you're trying to define is not completely devoid of redeeming qualities, whereas what has quickly become a veritable genre unto itself doesn't have any. Actually, I'd go beyond that definition: there is nothing inside them but random, restless and reckless chaos. There is no structure to be found if not that of constantly upping the ante in terms of shock value, regardless of how many flights of fancy it takes to even suspend your disbelief; you can't even find stereotypes there, because characters are nothing more than passive drones whose existence thrives and depends on histrionics (call them “agents of chaos,” if you will). Any semblance of story you can find has the sole purpose of provoking shock – being created, developing and dying in a vacuum.

Makjang dramas are black holes, nothing more.

What's becoming a little tiresome at this point though is how writers, producers, actors and broadcasters try to argue otherwise with apologetic press propaganda to the tune of “this is not a makjang drama” (whereas in the 1990s when the term was still in its infancy writers like Im Seong-Han and Moon Young-Nam would just defend their shows by throwing the knife in the viewers' hands, by essentially telling people that they were getting what they asked for, as the ratings would attest), to then throw everything including the kitchen sink and Ikea's entire collection at the viewers in the desperate hope of capturing their attention. Even the act of describing the plot of one of these shows has become a redundant exercise in futility.

You know what you'll get here: urgency and fabricated angst dominates everything. Characters go from joyous, sprightly ingenues to cold-blooded supervillains in the blink of an eye; class consciousness and the role money plays in their social interplay becomes the only defining trait that sets characters apart, and nothing is ever blessed with the elusive gift of fortuity – because your life is a collection of coincidences here, and you better be prepared to be run over by a cargo truck full of them. Performances range from the flippantly cute (Shin Da-Eun is such a promising young talent, and yet look at what an insipid performance she ends up giving here) to the eye-gougingly over-the-top (Lee Elijah makes Hwang Jung-Eum's most grating thespian antics look subtle by comparison), and nobody can escape from that fate when directing is this ham-fisted.

This is an horrendous and insulting disaster, written with no restraint whatsoever by people who think they can just come to work every morning and churn out creative excrement that could possibly only appeal to people who need background noise to make shirt ironing palatable, along with the advertisers who profit from it. And it's embarrassing that this industry still feels the need to degrade itself to this level.